


wake up, darling

by amiavegetable



Series: a supplementary story [3]
Category: Pentagon (Korea Band), Triple H (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Small Town, F/M, M/M, Multi, mv stories, retro future, robbers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 03:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15403821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amiavegetable/pseuds/amiavegetable
Summary: When she closes her eyes, she can see it. Maybe she’s not a lost princess, but she’s learned over the years that most things that seem unreachable aren't really, and that if she wants to have nice things, she can get them.





	wake up, darling

**Author's Note:**

> queen and kings are BACK to summon me out of my writing slump

It starts out as a joke.

“New challenge for the summer“, Hyuna says one day, sitting up abruptly, “get into the mansion.“

Hyojong blinks at her, July sun warm on his face. Grass blades tickling the shells of his ears, the back of his neck where the collar of his dress shirt feels stiff and unfamiliar. Hyuna recently went back to black, and just as her dress, the dark, feathery strands build a stark contrast to her skin. There’s a leaf stuck to her hair next to her face, and she plucks it away with an impatient tug of her fingers.

“Think about it“, she continues, a glint in her eyes that Hyojong recognizes, from another adventure and another past. “I’m bored, you’re bored-“

“I’m not bored“, Hyojong interrupts, pointedly raising an eyebrow at her.

Hyuna pretends she didn’t hear him. She does that sometimes, with a nonchalant half-shrug like Hyojong should really know better himself. She’s right, most of the time. “-and you know who’s the most bored of all?“

Hyojong sighs. “Who?“

She leans forward, like she has a secret to share, and Hyojong reflexively tilts his face closer to hers. Her voice drops to a whisper. “The people inside of it.“

For a short moment she’s close enough that he sees the green specks in her eyes, and it takes him several seconds to process what she said.

“The people inside?“ He leans back. “You wanna break into the mansion while the owners are inside?“

Hyuna flaps her hand at him like she’s shooing off a fly. “I never said anything about breaking in.“

Hyojong leans back on his elbows and stares long and hard at the sky. In the almost-year he’s known Hyuna (and has it really only been a year?), she’s surprised him many times. His time with her, their time together, has marked his body and soul, literally. Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he can still feel her fingertips pressing against the tender, reddened skin on his back. One letter, a capital H, next to his shoulder blade and opposite his heart. _For_ _Hyojong_ , she’d said with a twinkling laugh, but really, _for_ _Hyuna_ , he’d known.

The mansion is one of Hyuna’s daydreams, a castle she’d own if she’d been born rich and on the North side of town, miles and miles and miles away. She saw it once, in another life as she claims. A valley and two hundred million dollars away, it could have well been on the further side of the moon.

“A challenge, huh“, he says finally, closing his eyes and seeing white spots moving across the backs of his eyelids like fireworks.

“Well, it’s not going to be _easy_ “, Hyuna says, her flippant tone contradicting her words. “But we need something - a goal - for the summer, or we’re gonna go crazy, you know.“

She pauses, a giggle breaking past her lips, as if that thought is amusing to her. When Hyojong opens his eyes, she’s crept closer to him, her mouth tilted into a lopsided, annoyingly charming smile. “So“, she taps a finger against his sternum, “what do you think?“

“Okay“, Hyojong says carelessly, letting his gaze drop from her face to her ankles, her feet ridded of the black vaguely inappropriate stilettos she’d worn to the funeral, lying carelessly thrown aside in the grass. He hooks a finger beneath the heel of one, letting it dangle from the thin leather strip in front of Hyuna’s face. He sees the smile slide off her face with the realization of what he’s going to say next, and lets himself enjoy having the upper hand.

“Just one question“, he says, feeling a self-righteous smirk creep onto his face.

“How are you gonna get there?“

x

A pastor’s funeral is a strange thing to witness.

It takes place just far enough outside of most people’s usual mental realms to make everyone uncomfortable, but because it’s the pastor, and because it’s a tight-knit community, they all come.

Hui watches the small church fill with masses it hasn’t seen in years, the people’s faces veiled with bad conscience and sometimes, real grief. Naturally, he’s sitting in the front, his mother next to him, her body radiating chill like others might radiate warmth, bleeding through the layers of Hui’s suit.

He deserves her frosty attitude, he guesses, but he can’t bring himself to regret what he’s done. His scalp feels itchy and tender, and he can almost sense the looks grazing the back of his head. With every new inch his mother freezes over, he’s more satisfied: they came thinking of him only in relation to his father’s sudden, ugly death, they’re going to leave talking about his disrespectful behavior. He’ll take that over their pity any day.

Pastor Lee passed away early and unexpected, resulting from an infection from a badly healed scar of a minor surgical intervention, his cause of death unusual and nonsensical enough to attract semi-wide spread media attention, which for a few weeks granted Hui and his mother the headache of being recognized on the street for no decent reason.

After this, Hui muses as the steady influx of people entering the church and filling the rows of seats slowly dies down, it’s going to be different. He’s going to feel his father’s absence more than he has until now, and it’s probably going to hurt. He wonders, with an oddly detached outlook on himself, when he’s going to feel empty.

He spots Hyuna in the middle of the new pastor’s droning preaching, her hair dark and her lips a shocking ruby red. Snow White, he thinks dumbly, bullshit, he thinks next. She stays seated when everybody else rises to say grace, and Hui almost laughs out loud imagining her feeding the birds.

“Interesting“, she says when the service is over, her head tilted to one side as her eyes trace the shape of his head. “How long did that take?“

“Five hours“, Hui mumbles, resolve crumbling in her presence. “Bleached it six times.“

She looks pensive, eyes never leaving his face, and Hui squirms. A few steps away, his mother is talking to leaving attendees, receiving condolences and flowers. His father’s freshly dug grave looks exactly and at the same time nothing at all like a flowerbed in the winter.

“So what was it? An act of rebellion?“, she says finally, just as Hui feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin.

“Something like that“, Hui mutters. He’s almost certain his face is red.

Hyuna’s eyes briefly dart to the side, where Hui is sure that his mother is giving them disapproving looks, and smiles.

“You did a good job, for a first-timer“, she says, brushing a wayward strand of light hair from his forehead. Her face turns serious, suddenly.

“Hui“, she hesitates, “I’m sorry about your dad.“

For one single heartbeat, her hand lingers on his face. Something in his chest clenches. It feels like something fleshy, an organ maybe, squashed beneath a lead weight.

Oh, he thinks, there it is.

x

When she closes her eyes, she can see it.

For years, her recollections of what it looked like blurred out with time, like an old photograph’s colors falling victim to sunlight and dust. Nowadays, she can make its contours grow vivid behind her eyelids with a snap of her fingers.

She used to think that she was a lost princess, growing up between gray walls by mistake, a misunderstanding at birth. The big house she saw in her dreams seemed to be proof of that theory. It took her years to realize that kids on this side of the valley never really come from anything but paper houses with dry swimming pools.

When she closes her eyes, she can see it. Maybe she’s not a lost princess, but she’s learned over the years that most things that seem unreachable aren't really, and that if she wants to have nice things, she can get them.

And so she does.


End file.
